Santiago metro

I thought I'd put the Santiago metro map on here, just for fun.  Our closest metro stop is Salvador, on the red line.  We often shop at Costanera Center which is roughly between the Los Leones and Tobalaba stops on the red line (to the East of us).  Our usual pattern is to walk down there, and then take the metro back when we're loaded down with groceries.

To get to work, J takes the red line west to Los Heroes, and then takes the yellow line south to Parque O'Higgins.

Downtown is roughly where the yellow line crosses the green and red lines.  However, every time we've gone to that area, we've just walked from our house--it's about a 45 min walk through park the whole way until the last 5 blocks or so.

Truth is, we mostly walk everywhere, but it's nice to take the metro sometimes.  It certainly feels completely unnecessary to have a car.  The girls have gotten the metro totally figured out and know all the stops, and which direction we have to take it to get where we are going.  They also have the little recorded announcements memorized--warnings about the doors closing, and the notifications of the upcoming stop, etc.--all in Spanish, of course.

"Extreme" weather

Put a big X on your calendar, folks..... it was OVERCAST in Santiago today!!!  It even rained (we didn't realize it ever did anything like that here) and we had some thunder.  The girls were so excited that they begged to rush out and run around and play in the rain.  I did not get rained on during my morning hike up San Cristobal, but the city sure did look different than usual.

About mid-morning we noticed that we were all feeling chilly in the apartment--we put on sweatshirts, I was wearing long pants, and I even donned my wool socks.  At one point I decided to look it up to see just how cold it actually was.

Da-da-DUMM......  SEVENTY DEGREES!!!   Hahaha!  Let's just say we've "adjusted to the heat," which sounds so much better than the alternative: that we've become weather wimps.

Meanwhile in Pittsburgh it was so cold (I mean, actually cold for REAL) that they closed school.  We got the announcement by email.  -7 or something.  Brrr! I can hardly wrap my brain around it being that cold--nearly 100 degrees below the temperature here on the average day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

While I was away in Atlanta, J held down the fort in Santiago with the girls.  He worked with them on their computer programming, made them pancakes for breakfast, and shirked the laundry.

On the weekend they also took a hike to a beautiful spot which is right in Santiago, reachable by public transit--El Parque Natural Aguas de Ramon.  The hike culminates at some cool waterfalls.  Sadly, Bear's foot was bothering her (they think she may have sprained it right at the beginning of the hike) so they weren't able to reach the end of the trail.  However, it looks like a great place that deserves a return visit.

Somewhere along the trail there was a zipline that the girls were quite taken with, although neither of them seemed to eager to sign up for it.....

The other thing J and the girls did was to plan an elaborate crepe brunch for me on my return from Atlanta (I arrived early on Tuesday morning).  It struck me that the last time I was coming through the Santiago airport I was thinking, "I wonder what our apartment will be like....  I wonder if we're going to like it here.....  I wonder if I'll be able to understand Chilean Spanish.... I wonder.... I wonder....."  and this time around, coming through the same exact corridors only one month later, I was thinking, "I'm almost home, I'm almost home!"

Atlanta

I had such a great time in Atlanta with Trio Nova Mundi, premiering Elisenda Fabregas' Triple Concerto for Piano Trio and Orchestra!

The first night we stayed at the lake house of Maestro Ramirez and his lovely wife Carol.

My flight came in hours before the others so I had plenty of time to practice on this lovely refurbished Steinway, with a spectacular lake view.  Later after we rehearsed a bit, Carol taught me to make corn tortillas from scratch, which I had never done before.  Yum!  I'm hooked!

Here's another view of the lake at sunset.  I couldn't really get over this place, it was so gorgeous!

Lake Arrowhead.... the Georgia edition.

The following day Elisenda arrived and also came to the lake house--it was our first time meeting her, although we've been playing her music for years.  We all hit it off famously and had a riot of a time!  In the afternoon we went over the concerto with her and with Maestro Ramirez, hashing out our notes, making small corrections and changes, and working out the kinks so we'd be ready for the orchestra rehearsal the next morning.

Saturday afternoon after the orchestra rehearsal Elisa and I went with Elisa's friends Doug and Mary for the rest of the day.  We had a lovely lunch, visited the impressive Atlanta Aquarium.......

..... enjoyed some of Atlanta's beautiful public spaces.....

.... and basically had a wonderful time!  After a tasty dinner Doug and Mary took us back to Kim's house, where we were staying in Atlanta (she is one of the violists in the orchestra we were playing with).

The concert was a big success!  The piece went better than rehearsal and the audience received it very enthusiastically.

We've posted a few highlights from the concert on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJeT4bWu0Po

I wish I had some pictures of the party following the concert--Kim hosted it at her house, and many of the symphony players came to celebrate with us.  We had such a fun time!  In fact, my stomach was literally killing me from laughing so hard!  (....That would actually characterize the whole weekend, now that I think about it.)   Maestro Ramirez had made a Mexican feast for us including homemade tortillas, multiple salsas, frijoles, and most importantly, his famous mole, which the others enjoyed over baked chicken.... and I just ate like soup.  :-)   Later in the evening we were coaxed to play the trio version of Ramirez's Huapangos, which he played with us on the guitar.  So incredibly fun!  Others also played and sang after us, and it was pretty much an all-around rocking party!  (The neighbors even complained about the noise from the porch and the police dropped by to tell us to pipe it down a bit.....  we almost felt like teenagers!)

The next morning as we were all packing up, Maestro Ramirez came to Kim's and made breakfast for us.

Everyone else was leaving mid to late morning, but my flight wasn't until 10pm so I traipsed around with Maestro Ramirez all day.   He very obligingly ferried me to do my various Stateside errands.  This involved finding an REI so I could stock up on backpacking fare for our upcoming trip to Torres del Paine, hitting a grocery store for our favorite brand of power bars....  all the various things we weren't sure we'd be able to find in Chile, and which we had indeed discovered we could not.

I had also sent Elisa on a grand treasure hunt in our house before coming to Atlanta so she could bring me some essentials--mostly things that we (inaccurately) assumed we'd have in our furnished apartment in Santiago.  Although the things she brought didn't take up much room, I had her bring a full-size duffle bag so that I'd have an extra piece of luggage going back to Chile.  I was able to pack it to the max with all my Atlanta purchases, which are all consumables and will presumably be gone in a few months.  In addition, we'll now have some extra space for bringing things home in April.

After carting me around for most of the morning, we returned to Ramirez's Atlanta house where I was able to take a nap and make some phone calls while he taught a student.  We then went with their son David (who is a fine cellist, just breaking out onto the job scene) and had some dinner before they took me to the airport.  On the way out the door, I spied an enormous collection of drying peppers in Ramirez's studio.  He has nearly every surface covered with peppers from all over the place.  Maybe these are some of the secret ingredients in his famous mole!

What a fun and amazing weekend!!

Pastel de choclo

Pastel de Choclo!  We used this recipe and the girls enjoyed helping with the process.

First we chopped the corn off the cob--the recipe did not specify that we should cook the corn first, so we didn't.

We pulsed the corn with basil in the blender. We really either needed to go way more low-tech (mortar & pestle) or way more high-tech (food processor) here.  The blender didn't really work very well at all, but we made do.

We added the milk slowly as we cooked the corn mixture, sauteing it in a bit of butter.  AND we learned about "salt to taste"!  :-)

Sauteing the onions and garlic

We added the soy meat (a.k.a. "ground beef") and cooked until brown, seasoning with cumin.

We greased the ceramica de Pomaire with butter

The beef mixture goes in first

Next come hard boiled eggs, pieces of chicken (we just omitted that completely, as we only have one type of soy meat here), and also (optionally) olives.  

The corn mixture goes on the top, spread out to cover everything below.  We didn't have a way to measure how much corn mixture to make.  We thought we made a ton, but it would have been nice to have even more.  Next time I'll allot about 2.5 ears of corn per pastel.  After the corn mixture comes a sprinkle of sugar to help the top of the pastel carmelize.

Here those babies are, baking away in the oven--the house smells AMAZING!

Finished product!  YUM!

Hopefully this will hold me over on the airplane tonight!  Off to the airport in less than an hour.  Breakfast in Atlanta!

Comida chilena

I finally managed to make it to the farmer's market right here near our house.  It's every Sunday morning from 11 to mid-afternoon.  However, between not knowing about it the first week, and then having other plans on Sunday the subsequent weeks, we haven't been able to take advantage until this past Sunday.

It's a wonderful market with nearly 50 stands to choose from.  Almost all of them had this particular combination of items packaged together.  I don't know if this has a special name, but it seemed pretty popular, so of course I had to try it.

It's some kind of bean that I'm not familiar with (if anyone knows what they are, let me know!)  They are relatively soft even before cooking, and they cook quickly (i.e. more like lentils, as opposed to black or kidney beans).  The orange chunks are pieces of pumpkin, which is hugely popular here, and then there's a little clump of basil leaves.  I just dumped this whole business into a pot with sauteed onions and garlic and cooked it up.  Yum!!!  The pumpkin cooks to smithereens and becomes a tasty creamy base for the soup.

 Definitely going to be making this a lot while we are here!  I think next time I'll try pureeing the whole thing.  The fam liked it, but I don't think they were crazy about the texture of the beans.

Today we went to Los Dominicos--a series of galleries towards the Eastern side of Santiago where local artists can show and sell their wares.

Many of the shops serve as studios as well, and we got to see quite a few artists at work making things.  I found these beauties, so now I'll be able to try out the Pastel de Choclo recipe.

The "Ceramica de Pomaire" is a special type of pottery created in the town of Pomaire, about an hour from Santiago.  This is the typical pottery used to the make the Pastel de Choclo.  Apparently it's a Chilean "thing" to go to Pomaire to spend the day, have lunch, buy your pottery, etc.  The pieces are sadly quite breakable, so I guess people have to do this with some regularity, to replace any that have broken.  Given that we will probably prioritize going to the mountains when we rent a car, rather than making a shopping excursion, I was happy that I found a place to buy them here in Santiago.

If I'm really organized, I'll try the Pastel de Choclo tomorrow.  However, I'm flying to Atlanta tomorrow night for the trio's premiere of the Triple Concerto.  I may not quite be able to pull it off amidst packing, etc.  Maybe J will have it all figured out by the time I get back next week.

Andes 101 - Cajon del Maipo

Our first hike in the Andes!  We rented a car and drove up into Cajon del Maipo, which is one of the recreational areas outside Santiago.

We had planned to do a cool hike up to the El Morado Glacier, which claims to have a very "Patagonia" feel to it.  Apparently you can often see large chunks of ice floating in the lake at the base of the glacier.  We were excited about seeing something like this, and the hike seemed like a good distance for us.   However, when we got within 7 km of the trailhead  (at this point we had been driving about 11 km on gravel access road) we came across this.

We learned later that a gigantic avalanche had crashed down last week and washed this bridge out.  Oops!  The other hike up in that area (to Nieves Negras) is quite a bit longer and we had set that one aside as a good option for a backpacking trip on a different weekend.  We bounced back down the dirt road to Baños Morales and set out on a hike in the national park there.

It was already late by this point, around 1pm.  It was extremely hot and the first km of the hike was fairly steep.  Furthermore, this area of the Andes is completely alpine and there are zero trees, except in the little communities where people have planted them, and maintain them by watering.  All of this did not bode well for good attitudes from the 10-and-under contingent in our party.  However, after a lot of pouting and crying on their part, and cajoling on our part, we managed to get about 2.5 km up the trail where there were some mineral water falls cascading down an embankment across from the trail.

After a snack, Jonathan offered that I go up ahead to see if I could catch a glimpse of the lake at the end of the basin and he would return with the girls to the shady stream back in Baños Morales where we had parked the car.

I didn't go far enough to see the lake, but I did reach a high point in the trail that provided an impressive view to the back of the basin.

360 degrees of bliss!

Some more views on the way down.

Baños Morales in the valley

 I found Jonathan and the girls resting under the trees at the bottom of the hike.

A much needed foot soak....

Quick stop at an open air empanada stand in San Jose de Maipo on the way down the mountain.  Best empanadas we've had in Chile so far!  One was plain cheese (which in Chile means mantecoso cheese), one had goat cheese, tomato, and Italian seasoning, and the third had corn, peppers, and zucchini.  Yum!  

Our chef is preparing the empanadas in the background, as Jonathan and the girls do a bit of map study.